A New Byrd-Hagel Resolution? As discussed in an article by Fred Singer, in 1997 the U.S. Senate passed by unanimous vote the Byrd-Hagel resolution against a climate protocol being considered by UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and by the Clinton-Gore Administration. The protocol in doubt became the unsuccessful Kyoto Protocol which extended the life of the UNFCCC and committed the parties to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2). Although signed technically signed by the US government, the Clinton-Gore administration did not submit the Kyoto Protocol to the Senate for ratification, as required by the Constitution to be binding on the US, in light of the opposition expressed in the Byrd-Hagel resolution.

In order to advance a vote for the Keystone XL pipeline in the Senate, the new Senate leadership considered amendments to the pipeline bill. [The prior leadership, under Harry Reid, generally refused to consider amendments to legislation.] On January 21, the Senate voted 98-1 that “climate change is real and is not a hoax” in an amendment offered by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I) and strongly promoted by Senator Bernie Sanders (D-Vermont). To the surprise of many, Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla), and new chairman of Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, supported the measure, even though many classify him as the Senate’s leading skeptic of human-caused global warming/climate change.

James Taranto who writes “Best of the Web” for the Wall Street Journal was one of the few who understood what was happening. Taranto wrote:

But don’t worry. Inhofe, chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, hasn’t suddenly gone warmist. We noted last week that Vermont’s Sen. Bernie Sanders was planning on introducing an amendment calling on his colleagues to express loyalty to “the entire worldwide scientific community,” which purportedly adheres to the doctrine known as climate change.

“‘There is archeological evidence of that, there’s Biblical evidence of’ the climate changing,” Politico quotes Inhofe as saying. He might have added that there’s paleontological evidence—after all, the climate was changing long before Homo sapiens came along.

Actually, he might have gone further still. Climate change in this sense has no need of evidence. The proposition “Climates change,” like the proposition “2 plus 2 equal 4,” is not an empirical hypothesis but a tautology. It is true by definition. Climate is change. There is no climate change on the moon, but only because there is no atmosphere and hence no climate. Climate change is like chemicals: Without it, life itself would be impossible.

The Senate adjourned without a final vote on the pipeline itself (Senate bill S.1), and it is scheduled to resume on Monday afternoon, January 26, which is forecasted to be a rainy and snowy day in Washington.

Fred Singer sees an opening in this game playing. A bi-partisan Resolution might be sponsored by Sen. Roy Blunt, (R-MO) and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), similar to the 1997 Byrd-Hagel Resolution, and it may garner sufficient support to pass. Such a resolution will blunt President Obama’s ambition for an agreement at the UNFCCC Conference of Parties in Paris in December 2015, probably the President’s last opportunity to make global warming/climate change his signature issue, even though public support is fading. Senator Manchin’s state is suffering from reduced coal production caused by the Administration’s campaign against coal-fired power plants. See Articles # 1 and # 2 and links under The Political Games Continue.

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Quote of the Week:Choosing to make selective choices among competing evidence, so as to emphasize those results that support a given position, while ignoring or dismissing any findings that do not support it, is a practice known as “cherry picking” and is a hallmark of poor science or pseudo-science. Richard Somerville Testimony before the US House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Power, March 8, 2011.

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Number of the Week: $100 Billion USD

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Cherry Picking Temperatures: The quote-of-the-week comes from Richard Somerville, a climate scientist and professor emeritus at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. As such, he signed a petition opposing the Keystone XL pipeline. According to his web site, Somerville was a Coordinating Lead Author in Working Group I, Physical Science, for the 2007 Fourth Assessment Report (AR-4) of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He is not a global warming skeptic. The Summary for Policymakers of AR-4 expressed great certainty in the science and the global climate models and it formed a basis for EPA’s finding that emissions of greenhouse gases, particularly CO2, endanger public health.

As expressed in the January 10 and 17 TWTWs, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) issued a joint press release on 2014 temperatures, declaring it the warmest recorded. Both agencies ignore measurements from satellites, the most comprehensive set of global temperature ever compiled, which do not support the claim that 2014 was the warmest year on record.

Using the definition above, both NOAA and NASA are engaged in cherry picking, a hallmark of poor science or pseudo-science. These agencies are misleading the public

As criticism of the press release by NOAA and NASA intensified, Gavin Schmidt of NASA-GISS (Goddard Institute of Space Studies) presented a table by NASA stating there was a 38% probability that 2014 was the warmest year recorded. Apparently, both NOAA and NASA calculated such probabilities prior to the press release but did not disclose them.

State of the Union: To complicate the effort to mislead the public with grand announcements of global temperatures by using inferior, “cherry-picked” data, President Obama cited the temperature announcements of NOAA and NASA in his State of the Union Address, using it to solicit support from the public for his program to combat climate change by restricting carbon dioxide emissions – no matter if the causes are not known. Usually, the leaders of governments departments take pride when their entities are singled out by the President in such a public forum as examples of excellent work. There have been no reports of reactions by the heads of NOAA and NASA for the praise President Obama gave their agencies.

As all too typical, the President also singled out the improvements in US oil and natural gas production. These increases are a boon to the economy. But they have occurred on lands not controlled by Federal entities, with production from federally controlled lands and waters declining. See links under Defending the Orthodoxy, Questioning the Orthodoxy, Seeking a Common Ground, and Energy Issues – US.

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A Bit of Humor: After examining the paucity of data that went into the NOAA and NASA claim of the warmest year on record, Tim Ball examines ice core data from Greenland (GRIP). He observes that “the record is at least 10,000 years old” with the Climatic Optimum about

2.5°C warmer than present, about 4,000 to 7,000 years ago. From this, he concludes that 2014 is one of the coldest years in the 10,000 year record, and groups it with about 3% of the years over the past 10,000 that were as cold.

The analysis brings out an important point. How many of the politicians and Senators who are so anxious to stop global warming/climate change by controlling CO2 emissions have any idea of the history of climate of their State? Senator Sanders from Vermont, the Green Mountain State, seems to be blissfully unaware that for much of the past 2.5 million years the state was a barren, frozen wasteland, occasionally changed by brief warm periods. As late as 20,000 years ago, it was covered by thousands of feet of ice. Senator Whitehouse appears to be similarly ignorant of climate history. Rhode Island was covered with ice and its famed rugged coast line was quite flat, with the continental shelf stretching many miles beyond the current shore-line. Sea levels were about 400 feet lower than today and “teeth of mastodons and mammoths have been recovered by fishermen from at least 40 sites on the continental shelf as deep as 120 meters.”

Personal Attacks: With Nature refusing to obey the projections from climate models, exposing weakness of the climate science as stated by the IPCC; there seems it be an increase in personal attacks to attempt to discredit scientists who do not accept that CO2 emissions are causing unprecedented and dangerous global warming. A common tactic is accusing scientists of receiving funding from improper sources, whatever they are. Those using this tactic frequently ignore the issue, what is the quality of the product? Is “cherry picking” any better or worse if the funding sources are tobacco companies or governments? Both can mislead the public on important issues such as public health.

It may be time to review the work by Russell Cook, exposing a few experts in personal vilification and the issues in which they were involved. It is sad to think that many practitioners of this practice are highly regarded in some professional circles, indicating that those in these circles have difficulty distinguishing between an accusation and evidence supporting the accusation.

Fred Singer Notes: Russell Cook has done a careful ‘forensic’ investigation of the false accusations against so-called climate skeptics. His latest opus is published as a Policy Brief by the Heartland Institute at http://heartland.org/policy-documents/merchants-smear

Cook traces the whole sad story — from retired journalist Ross Gelbspan (who claims to have a Pulitzer Prize) all the way to Prof Naomi Oreskes (who styles herself as a ‘science historian’). As true believers in anthropogenic [human-caused] global warming (AGW), they rely on a manufactured scientific consensus — that does not exist. They desperately try to link skeptics to the tobacco industry — in order to attack the scientific credibility of the vast and growing number of those who doubt AGW.

The Merchants of Smear were dealt a serious blow by the Oregon Petition, signed by more than 31,000 scientists and engineers — one-third of them with advanced degrees. But the final blow has come from Mother Nature: no warming for the past 18 years — and counting — in complete contradiction to every climate model.

However, like all ‘true believers’ who claim “The End is Near” they double down and simply shift the date of the apocalypse into the future.

Fred Singer, Chairman, SEPP 1/24/2015

See links under Communicating Better to the Public – Go Personal and Article # 5.

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Peak Oil? No! Peak Bio! In the 1970s The Limits of Growth, attempted to use state-of-the-art computer models to establish that production of oil and many other essential materials are reaching their peak. This coincided with the idea that humanity cannot sustain itself. It failed. As can be seen by the US production of oil and the oil market, the assumptions did not bear out.

Now we are being exposed to a new peak – artificially contrived planet boundaries. The fear of carbon dioxide caused global warming is losing its effect. So another fear must take its place. See links under Communicating Better to the Public – Make things up.

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Another Week, Another Conference: The World Economic Forum is having a conference in Davos Switzerland. This gives an opportunity for those who wish to expand control of people to present their latest schemes. One such scheme, endorsed by former Vice President Gore, is redesigning cities so they do not need cars. The proposal estimates that this solution to global warming will cost only “$90 trillion (£59 trillion) over the next few years to redesign all the cities — as in all the cities on earth — so people live in more densely packed neighborhoods and don’t need cars.” The proposal is presented under the self-proclaimed “The Global Commission on the Economy and Climate”, indicating that economy does not mean frugality.

It is amusing to note that those who count these things estimated that attendees included those arriving in some 1700 private aircraft (Zurich airport). If one is to ban automobiles, there is no reason that they cannot travel in style.

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Number of the Week: $100 Billion (USD) Thus far, the big surprise from the World Economic Forum in Davos is that a private consulting firm working for the Forum estimated that countries in Europe wasted (squandered) about $100 Billon on renewable energy projects that were of the wrong type or in the wrong place. Solar power in cloudy and northern (low sun angle) Germany is but one example. The tax payers and ratepayers who subsidize such poor decisions will never see that money again.

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ARTICLES:

Please note that articles that are not linked or summarized here are reproduced in the Articles Section of the full TWTW that can be found on the web site under the date of the TWTW.

[SEPP Comment: Will the National Resources Defense Council, of which the author is president, ever realize that the science upon which such claims are based has major problems? Such advocates holding senior administrative positions in the Department of Interior are not enhancing the credibility of these government agencies.]

[SEPP Comment: The author asserts that the economic models on climate damages may be reflecting our assumptions back at us. The same could be said for the global climate models, the assumptions have not been thoroughly tested.]

[SEPP Comment: Start with unsubstantiated assumptions of the future, add more unsubstantiated assumptions, and you have a new model. The propaganda photo of flooding from (non) hurricane Sandy summed it up.]

[SEPP Comment: As the UN and other organizations endeavor to make electricity less affordable: “The United Nations’ International Year of Light was launched in the City of Light (Paris, France) on Monday,”]

Seeking a Common Ground

European Scientists and Scholars Issue Communique Demanding Freedom of Speech on Climate Science and on Global Warming Policies say Friends of Science

“In concluding this summary document, it should be clear that the panic-evoking extinction-predicting paradigms of the past are rapidly giving way to the realization that they bear little resemblance to reality. Earth’s plant and animal species clearly are not slip-sliding away – even slowly – into the netherworld of extinction that is preached from the pulpit of climate alarmism as being caused by CO2-induced global warming.”

[SEPP Comment: Although the errors in them may be similar, models of financial issues are not directly comparable with models of nature. The failure to properly test the models is common to financial markets and to climate science as practiced by the IPCC.]

Measurement Issues

Nasa climate scientists: We said 2014 was the warmest year on record… but we’re only 38% sure we were right

Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies claimed its analysis of world temperatures showed ‘2014 was the warmest year on record’

But it emerged that GISS’s analysis is subject to a margin of error

Nasa admits this means it is far from certain that 2014 set a record at al

[SEPP Comment: Contrary to the headline, elsewhere the study asserts: “More than 60 percent of the yield variability can be explained by climate variability in regions that are important producers of major crops, including the Midwestern U.S., the North China Plains, western Europe and Japan.” The statement indicates the researchers may be confusing weather with climate.]

“Anyone that has ever kept a fish tank knows that if you crank up your aquarium heater and dump acid into the water, your fish are in trouble,” said co-author Malin Pinsky, an ecologist at Rutgers University. “This is what climate change is doing now to the oceans.”

[SEPP Comment: There may be some validity in the general article, but it is totally eliminated by the extreme views quoted above.]

Communicating Better to the Public – Make things up.

Atmospheric warming heats the bottom of ice sheets, as well as the top

[SEPP Comment: The effortis led by Retired Admiral Robert Papp, U.S. Special Representative for the Arctic. Given the Navy’s promotion of biofuels in the name of national security, totally ignoring massive increases in US production of fossil fuels, little realism can be expected here.]

Expanding the Orthodoxy

Politics More: Davos World Economic Forum

A Plan Is Floating Around Davos To Spend $90 Trillion Redesigning All The Cities So They Don’t Need Cars

[SEPP Comment: Apparently the leadership of the International Atomic Energy Agency believes that by promoting the fear of carbon dioxide, it can reduce the fear of nuclear power and waste. This may be a false dilemma, the public can reject both fossil fuels and nuclear power.]

“The effect of settlements in deadline suits on EPA’s rulemaking priorities is limited. According to EPA officials, settlements in deadline suits primarily affect a single office within EPA—the Office of Air Quality Planning and Standards (OAQPS)—because most deadline suits are based on provisions of the Clean Air Act for which that office is responsible.”

[SEPP Comment: According to the article wind turbine producer Solacidy states: “Wind turbines need wind. Not just any wind, but the nicely flowing, smooth, laminar kind. That cannot be found at 30 feet height. It can usually not be found at 60 feet. Sometimes you find it at 80 feet. More often than not it takes 100 feet of tower to get there.”]

Proof that the wind industry cannot be relied upon for our electricity

Wind farms have been of very little use when we need vast amounts of electricity

Preliminary findings offer interesting clues about how climate change might affect Antarctic ice, according to a recent report on the expedition published by Scientific American. Ross Powell, a glaciologist from Northern Illinois University and WISSARD chief scientist, pointed to a layer of pebbles strewn on the bottom of the seawater cavity. They appear to have dropped from the ice as it melted and indicate a fairly recent change in the environment.

They might help measure how fast the ice is melting and the stability of the ice shelf. A weakening or collapse of the Ross Ice Shelf would allow glaciers to flow more rapidly into the ocean, raising global sea level.

8 thoughts on “Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup #165”

“One such scheme, endorsed by former Vice President Gore, is redesigning cities so they do not need cars. The proposal estimates that this solution to global warming will cost only “$90 trillion (£59 trillion) over the next few years to redesign all the cities ”
Al Gore should listen to the world’s top economists including four Nobel laureates in the Copenhagen Consensus. They analyzed the costs and benefits of solving the world’s biggest problems. Global warming did not make it to their top ten priorities. Higher in their priority list are deworming of school children and salt reduction in processed foods. The eminent economists see greater benefits in making our potato chips less salty than stopping Al Gore’s global warming hysteria.

Another aspect of cherry-picking that is not well understood in some quarters : Proponents of a theory have to take all evidence into account, otherwise they are cherry-picking. But regardless of how much evidence there is in support of a theory, a single piece of evidence is sufficient to disprove it – and that’s not cherry-picking. But of course, and just to confuse the issue, that single piece of evidence can’t be cherry-picked. Unfortunately, because of the lack of understanding, the proponents of AGW are able to get away with false accusations of cherry-picking. Even more unfortunately, many of those in the scientific community who could correct them stay silent.

M Courtney. If you haven’t seen it before, over at Ben Pile’s ‘Climate Resistance’ (link below), go to the last ‘Vimeo’ video entitled ‘Lost Horizons’. From about 22:40 mins into the documentary, the presenter is talking to a lady stood under the rotating blades of a wind turbine at Fullabrook (the West Countries biggest onshore windfarm). Set your volume to maximum to hear the turbine’s sinister and merciless background noise. This is the best recorded example I have heard (better than any YouTube’s offerings). Enjoy.http://www.climate-resistance.org/videos

Re; $110 B wasted. I would just add that spending money on bad energy sources is only one side of energy costs. The rest of the story is the savings foregone on cheaper and more reliable energy sources. Thus, my ComEd bill may be 20% higher than in, say 2008, because ComEd committed more resources to “non’carbon” wind – (made a public relations announcement even). But it would also might have been 20% lower if it had committed to natural gas – thanks to technology and an industry that ignored the President and Matt Damon. Of course the political response of politicians who committed to the wrong choice is to try and hurt the competition by mandate and by tax and tell you it’s for science and justice.

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